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Karlton Hester
Karlton Hester (born February 11, 1949) is an American, performer, composer, scholar, and educator. Biography Hester earned his B.M. at University of Texas at El Paso, his M.A. in Music Education from San Francisco State University, and his Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York Graduate Center. He formally studied flute with Harry Nelsova and Paul Renzi, saxophone with Frank Chase and Bill Tremble, composition with Bruce Saylor and Robert Starer, and improvisation with Joe Henderson and John Handy. He began his career as a studio musician and music educator in Los Angeles and would later serve as the Herbert Gussman Director of Jazz Studies at Cornell University from 1990 to 2000. At Cornell, Hester directed the Traditional and Experimental Lab Ensembles and coordinated university festivals and conferences that included a diverse array of “jazz” and African artists including Jaki Byard, John Handy, Joe Henderson, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Toshiko Akiyosh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
El Paso, Texas
El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the county seat, seat of El Paso County, Texas, El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the List of United States cities by population, 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the List of cities in Texas by population, sixth-largest city in Texas, and the second-largest city in the Southwestern United States behind Phoenix, Arizona. The city is also List of U.S. cities with large Hispanic populations, the second-largest majority-Hispanic city in the U.S., with 81% of its population being Hispanic. Its metropolitan statistical area covers all of El Paso and Hudspeth County, Texas, Hudspeth counties in Texas, and had a population of 868,859 in 2020. El Paso has consistently been ranked as one of the safest large cities in America. El Paso stands on the Rio Grande across the Mexico–United States border from Ciuda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge—from the classics to the sciences, and from the theoretical to the applied. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's founding principle, a popular 1868 quotation from founder Ezra Cornell: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." Cornell is ranked among the top global universities. The university is organized into seven undergraduate colleges and seven graduate divisions at its main Ithaca campus, with each college and division defining its specific admission standards and academic programs in near autonomy. The university also administers three satellite campuses, two in New York City and one in Education City, Qatar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geri Allen
Geri Antoinette Allen (June 12, 1957 – June 27, 2017) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator. In addition to her career as a performer and bandleader, Allen was also an associate professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh and the director of the university's Jazz Studies program. Early life and education Allen was born in Pontiac, Michigan, on June 12, 1957, and grew up in Detroit. "Her father, Mount Allen Jr, was a school principal, her mother, Barbara, a government administrator in the defence industry." Allen was educated in Detroit Public Schools. She started playing the piano at the age of seven, and settled on becoming a jazz pianist in her early teens. Allen graduated from Howard University's jazz studies program in 1979. She then continued her studies: with pianist Kenny Barron in New York; and at the University of Pittsburgh, where she completed a master's degree in ethnomusicology in 1982. After this, she returned to New York. Later life and ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Lloyd (jazz Musician)
Charles Lloyd (born March 15, 1938) is an American jazz musician. Though he primarily plays tenor saxophone and flute, he has occasionally recorded on other reed instruments, including alto saxophone and the Hungarian tárogató. Lloyd's primary band since 2007 has been a quartet including pianist Jason Moran, acoustic bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Eric Harland. Early life and education Charles Lloyd was born and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, and was exposed to blues, gospel and jazz. He is of African, Cherokee, Mongolian, and Irish ancestry. He was given his first saxophone at the age of nine and was riveted by 1940s radio broadcasts by Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. His early teachers included pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr. and saxophonist Irvin Reason. His closest childhood friend was trumpeter Booker Little. As a teenager Lloyd played jazz with saxophonist George Coleman, Harold Mabern, and Frank Stro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Randy Weston
Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston (April 6, 1926 – September 1, 2018) was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection. Weston's piano style owed much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, whom he cited in a 2018 video as among pianists he counted as influences, as well as Count Basie, Nat King Cole and Earl Hines."Randy Weston talks about his new solo double CD Sound" YouTube video, March 27, 2018. Beginning in the 1950s, Weston worked often with trombonist and arranger Melba Liston. Described as "America's African Musical Ambassador", Weston once said: "What I do I do because it's about teaching and informing everyone about our most natural cultural phenomenon. It's really about Africa a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Taylor
Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. A jazz activist, Taylor sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America, an organisation he founded in 1989, with Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs, to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians who survived Hurricane Katrina. Taylor was a jazz educator, who lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz." Biography Early life and career Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina, Unit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Byrd
Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II (December 9, 1932 – February 4, 2013) was an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter and vocalist. A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was one of the few hard bop musicians who successfully explored funk and soul while remaining a jazz artist. As a bandleader, Byrd was an influence on the early career of Herbie Hancock. Biography Early life and career Byrd was born in 1932 in Detroit, Michigan. His family came from the African-American middle-class. His father, Elijah Thomas Byrd, was a Methodist minister who greatly valued education and oversaw his son's schooling. His mother, Cornelia Taylor, introduced Byrd to jazz music and it was her brother who gave Byrd his first trumpet. He attended Cass Technical High School. He performed with Lionel Hampton before finishing high school. During this period, his first professional recording session was in 1949 at Fortune Records in Detroit with the Robert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddy Collette
William Marcel "Buddy" Collette (August 6, 1921 – September 19, 2010) was an American jazz flutist, saxophonist, and clarinetist. He was a founding member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Early life William Marcel Collette was born in Los Angeles on August 6, 1921. He was raised in Watts, surrounded by people of all different ethnicities. He lived in a house built by his father in an area with cheap, plentiful land. The neighborhood in which he grew up was called Central Gardens area. For elementary school, he attended Ninety-sixth Street School because it allowed black students. Other schools in the area, such as South Gate Junior High School, did not and Collette often felt odd entering areas primarily inhabited by whites. Collette's family did not have a lot of money, but his childhood gave him the chance to mix with all sorts of different people. The “melting pot” of Watts framed the way he saw his position as a black man in the future. Buddy Collette bega ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Jordan
Louis Thomas Jordan (July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975) was an American saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as " the King of the Jukebox", he earned his highest profile towards the end of the swing era. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence" in 1987. Specializing in the alto sax, Jordan played all forms of the saxophone, as well as piano and clarinet. He also was a talented singer with great comedic flair, and fronted his own band for more than twenty years. He duetted with some of the biggest solo singing stars of his time, including Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Jordan was also an actor and a film personality—he appeared in dozens of "soundies" (promotional film clips) He also made numerous cameos in mainstream features and short films, and starred in two musical feature films: Swing Parade of 1946, probably targeting white viewers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Turrentine
Stanley William Turrentine (April 5, 1934 – September 12, 2000) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He began his career playing R&B for Earl Bostic and later soul jazz recording for the Blue Note label from 1960, touched on jazz fusion during a stint on CTI in the 1970s. He was described by critic Steve Huey as "renowned for his distinctively thick, rippling tone ndearthy grounding in the blues." In the 1960s Turrentine was married to organist Shirley Scott, with whom he frequently recorded, and he was the younger brother of trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, with whom he also recorded. Biography Turrentine was born in Pittsburgh's Hill District, United States, into a musical family. His father, Thomas Turrentine Sr., was a saxophonist with Al Cooper's Savoy Sultans, his mother played stride piano, and his older brother Tommy Turrentine was a trumpet player. He began his prolific career with blues and rhythm and blues bands, and was at first greatly influenced by Illinois Jacq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toshiko Akiyoshi
is a Japanese–American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. Akiyoshi received fourteen Grammy Award nominations and was the first woman to win Best Arranger and Composer awards in ''Down Beat'' magazine's annual Readers' Poll. In 1984, she was the subject of the documentary '' Jazz Is My Native Language''. In 1996, she published her autobiography, ''Life with Jazz'', and in 2007 she was named an NEA Jazz Master by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts. Biography Akiyoshi was born in Liaoyang, Manchuria, to Japanese colonists, the youngest of four sisters. In 1945, after World War II, Akiyoshi's family lost their home and returned to Japan, settling in Beppu. A local record collector introduced her to jazz by playing a record of Teddy Wilson playing "Sweet Lorraine." She immediately loved the sound and began to study jazz. In 1952, during a tour of Japan, pianist Oscar Peterson discovered her playing in a club on the Ginza. Peterson was impressed and convinc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McCoy Tyner
Alfred McCoy Tyner (December 11, 1938March 6, 2020) was an American jazz piano, jazz pianist and composer known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet (from 1960 to 1965) and his long solo career afterwards. He was an NEA Jazz Masters, NEA Jazz Master and five-time Grammy award winner. Unlike many of the jazz keyboardists of his generation, Tyner very rarely incorporated Electronic keyboard, electric keyboards or synthesizers into his work. Tyner has been widely imitated, and is one of the most recognizable and influential pianists in jazz history. Early life and family Tyner was born on December 11, 1938, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the eldest of three children of Jarvis and Beatrice (Stevenson) Tyner. His younger brother Jarvis Tyner was the executive vice-chairman of the Communist Party USA. Tyner was encouraged to study piano by his mother, who had installed a piano at her beauty salon. He began piano lessons at age 13 at the Granoff School of Music where he had als ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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